


Some Constellation

by TippyTypewriter



Series: How to Live Here [1]
Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Eventual Amberpricefield, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-16
Updated: 2016-05-16
Packaged: 2018-06-08 21:47:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6874906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TippyTypewriter/pseuds/TippyTypewriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’re supposed to be catching up, but they’re also supposed to be having a good time, so Max tucks the memory away and comments on today’s events instead.  “You didn’t tell me Rachel Amber was gorgeous.”</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>The beginning of the OT3 AU no one asked for, in which Max returns to Arcadia Bay after five years in Seattle. She's just met Rachel Amber, but now it's time to reconnect with her childhood best friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Constellation

**Author's Note:**

> Here I am, finally, with the very first part of my Amberpricefield AU collaboration with [explosionshark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/explosionshark). Rather than one many-chaptered monster, we're going to be trading off on entries in a series.
> 
> The basic premise of the AU is that it's canon up until Max leaves, but throughout those five years she and Chloe maintain tenuous long-distance contact. Rachel is still Chloe's new best friend. Nobody is going around and drugging/murdering girls; Jefferson and Nathan are just standard, run-of-the-mill creeps. There is no impending apocalypse and there are no time powers.
> 
> Several people have looked over this, at least in part, but I'd especially like to thank [Major](https://archiveofourown.org/users/majorrager) and [Jer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eiprej) for their help with character work and consistency checks. Read their stuff if you haven't already!
> 
> Finally, the title is stolen from "Some Constellation" by Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin. Sets a nice mood.

Chloe’s room is different now.  It’s all half-naked girls on the walls, Sharpie scrawlings, the faint scent of smoke that’s gone out the window, punk bands and beer cans.  But Max has seen these things already, caught scraps through the lens of social media until she could pull the image fully-formed into her mind’s eye, so the things that haven’t changed are what take her by surprise.

Falling back on the mattress, it’s the same only softer in the middle, a gentle sagging under the weight of Chloe sleeping and smoking and dancing for five years.  Overhead there’s a bit of adhesive stuck to the ceiling that used to back onto a glow-in-the-dark decal shaped like Saturn.  Max knows because she remembers sticking it there herself.

They’re supposed to be catching up, but they’re also supposed to be having a good time, so Max tucks the memory away and comments on today’s events instead.  “You didn’t tell me Rachel Amber was _gorgeous_.”

The chuckle that comes out of Chloe is muffled by her tank top as she’s pulling it over her head.  “You’ve seen pictures on Instagram, nerd,” she says, punctuated by the sliding of drawers, the hunt for something to sleep in.

Max tries not to think about the square-cropped close-ups of pale skin that lit her phone the night Chloe got her belly button pierced.  She doesn’t quite succeed, but she doesn’t think it comes through in her voice either.  “Yeah, but you know what I mean.  The way she moves in a room, and focuses on people.  I didn’t expect her to be, like, this _real model_.  Or as tall as you are,” she adds.

“First of all,” Chloe says, now clothed and sinking knees-first onto the edge of the bed, looming over Max to prove her point, “I have three eighths of an inch on her.”  Then she turns, limbs unfurling, lays out and stares at the ceiling too.  “But I do know.  We kind of, uh, fucked.  Once or twice.”

Suddenly Max is glad for the ghosts of plastic stars, because she can’t bring herself to look at anything else.  She’s too aware of the inches of bedspread separating them, the point where Chloe’s elbow lays hot over her own, how the dip in the mattress is owed to Rachel’s weight too.  It’s all in focus sharp enough to cut.  Max keeps her eyes to the ceiling, to the sky, and searches the blending-out edges of her vision for something to say.  She doesn’t have the time to find it.

“After a party, I think.  Bassheads and dancing kind of thing.  The way she moves in a room, you should see her on a dancefloor, but we were both pretty drunk and, y’know, experimentation or whatever.  I don’t think she even remembers.”  Chloe lets it all out in one breath, like a levee just broke somewhere inside of her.

The flood stalls the machinery of Max’s brain.  She spends long moments just trying to restart, weighing the held breath between them.  Finally she turns her head, but Chloe’s not looking at her either, not even when Max breaks the silence with a question: “Does that bother you?”

Chloe’s eyebrows rise and then furrow, like she’s considering a feeling she didn’t know was an option.  “Rachel’s my friend.  There are probably lots of things she doesn’t remember,” she says, and there’s weight in her voice that wasn’t there before.

It isn’t enough.  Max wants to push.  Six years ago, on this same bed hearing a confession that held the same weight at twelve that casual sex held now, it would’ve been easy to get all the details.  Max remembers it being _too_ easy, in fact, remembers how she _asked_ about what kissing was like and _got_ Chloe’s lips soft and dry on her own ...

Now she wants to sit up and grab Chloe by the shoulders, force eye contact, demand a straight answer, or else wrap her arms around her and coax it out of her soft.

But that isn’t Max’s place, and if it ever was then after half a decade it isn’t her time.  She isn’t going to get any kisses for pressing, so says the next thing that comes to mind.  “I dunno, you’re … pretty memorable.”  It’s sincere, but the bark of laughter she gets in response still satisfies.

“Yeah.  Kinda hard to forget the chick who got caught with a bunch of Jell-O powder in her swim locker, huh?”  Chloe’s looking at her now, eyes shining.

“It wasn’t even enough to do anything to the pool.”

“Look, only so much is gonna fit in a eighth-grader’s backpack.  It’s the principle of the matter.  And the principal thought it was a very serious matter.”

“For all he knew you were angling for Jell-O wrestling with the swim team.”  Even as the words leave her mouth, Max wishes she could pull them out of the air, stuff the syllables back down with her hands and not let them out until they’d rearranged themselves into something less presumptuous.  _She_ was on their junior high swim team.

But Chloe takes it in stride.  A slow sly smile spreads on her face.  “Damn, Max, if I’d known you had a crush back then I just might’ve gotten a bigger backpack.”

Max can’t keep up.  She could never outfox Chloe, not when she was twelve and not today.  Especially when, _shit_ , she doesn’t know if she _did_ have a crush back then but that cocky smirk never turned her limbs to jelly like it’s doing right now.  “Shut up,” she says, and swats at Chloe’s shoulder.

A chuckle builds from the bottom of Chloe’s chest, and almost as soon as it rings out, a pillow shoved into Max’s face dampens the sound.  When Max resurfaces, Chloe is up out of bed and rummaging through drawers again.

“Looking for your Jell-O stash?” Max supplies, figuring she’ll go for broke with the quips if her confusion is already going to make her look like an idiot.

Chloe snorts.  “I know you want an excuse for me to pin you down, but you gotta chill,” she says over her shoulder, still grinning, sorting through empty bottles and scratched jewel cases all the while.

“Okay, but I _know_ you’re not just cleaning.”

“I just don’t think we’ll actually be sleeping for a while.”

Another non-answer.  This time Max doesn’t mind so much.  The feeling of always being kept on her toes, even during the little moments, always waiting for some pleasant surprise, was one she’d missed.

After several minutes and a lot of cussing, Chloe is back at Max’s side with her laptop and a DVD in tow.  She brandishes the cover, says, “I bet you don’t remember _this_.  Wanna watch?”

Max just nods.  She could speak up, say that of course she remembers _Donnie Darko_ , how they watched it a zillion times together as kids.  But she’s content to curl up into Chloe’s side, silent as the screen sparks to life, because Max knows that if she says she remembers anything, she’ll say she remembers everything.

Everything.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope everyone is as excited for this AU as we are.
> 
> As always, come talk to me on [tumblr](http://holdsteady.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
